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German life insurers are faced with the challenge of realising sufficient levels of capital to be able to permanently provide the guaranteed contractual benefits for the insured event, despite persistently low interest rate levels. For the protection of insured persons and to ensure the ongoing viability of life insurers, the legislators have approved the Life Insurance Reform Act More : Life Insurance Reform Act

According to the IT industry association Bitkom, almost one-third of German companies, including German financial institutions, recorded cyber attacks on their IT systems last year. Such attacks create operational and reputation risks for the companies attacked. More : Cyber attacks

Investors have recently suffered considerable losses on capital investments. In response, the Federal Government has announced a package of measures which is expected to be implemented in early 2015 in the form of the Retail Investors Protection Act. More : Retail Investors Protection Act

On 1 January, the German Act on the Recovery and Resolution of Credit Institutions and several accompanying acts came into effect. They transpose the European Recovery and Resolution Directive. This is intended to facilitate the management of a crisis at an institution without jeopardising financial stability or falling back on taxpayers’ money. More : Recovery and resolution

BaFin has been regularly inviting interested insurance undertakings to exchange views on issues relating to internal models since 2006. Thorsten Arhold, head of the internal models section at BaFin, explains how supervisors and undertakings prepare themselves for the use of internal models and what challenges are still to be met. More : Internal models

Here you will find topics such as the authorisation of banks and insurance undertakings, risk management or bans on short selling as well as information on investments, prospectuses, capital requirements and anti-money laundering.

Topics

Find out here about the European supervisory structure, international regulation through Solvency II and Basel III, the stress tests and surveys carried out at the EU level and BaFin’s global and bilateral cooperation activities.

International bodies

Supervision in the EU

We answer frequently asked questions and provide you with information on key consumer issues such as investment here. You will also find details of who to complain to and contacts if you are having problems with a company or undertaking.

Consumer information

If you have any questions about BaFin itself, you can find out here about the functions and history of BaFin, how it is funded, job vacancies and media contacts. You will also find further details on the executive and staff.